This invention relates generally to a method and apparatus for detecting the copying of a document protected by a copyright on a reprographic device, and more particularly to the automatic collection and/or recording of copyright royalty fee information based upon encoded copyright information recorded on the copyrighted document.
Reprographic devices (by which is meant devices intended for the convenient reproduction in hardcopy form of documents, whether said documents are in paper, other hardcopy, or electronic form prior to said reproduction, including photocopiers, electronic printers, digital copiers, telecopiers, spirit duplicators, and the like) are used to reproduce all types of documents, including documents that should not be reproduced, or whose reproduction should be limited, tracked or controlled. One common example of a potential abuse of reprographic devices is the copying or reprinting of materials subject to copyright. Recently, many governments have updated copyright laws, and worldwide efforts have been underway to develop a means by which authors and publishers can be fairly recompensed for such copying. Non-profit national collectives, for example the Copyright Clearance Center in the United States, usually referred to as Reproduction Rights Organizations (RRO's), implement copyright licensing systems and convey royalties to the authors and publishers. The RRO's derive their authority from national legislation, contracts with the authors and publishers, and bilateral agreements with other RRO's.
Generally, an RRO pursues the licensing of specific organizations, for example, schools, governments, and private enterprise. In some cases the RRO may grant permission, on a case-by-case basis, for copying particular jobs in return for a specific fee. As an alternative to this transaction-based system, the RRO may grant a blanket license. In a typical blanket license, an organization agrees to pay royalties to the RRO for the reproduction of copyrighted materials over a specified number of years, where the royalty is based upon a sampled survey of the licensee's copier usage.
The licensee pays the RRO a fixed per copy fee for estimated copyright copies for the duration of the license. Paying such fees is often preferable to the licensee than buying the publications or continuing to make illegal copies. Of course, while such schemes are commonly applied to photocopying, they could apply to materials reproduced by other reprographic means, such as electronic printing, digital copying, facsimile transmission (telecopying), etc.
In addition to the determination of copyright percentage, many RRO's track information regarding the bibliographic source and/or content of reproduced copyrighted material, e.g., title, author, publisher, type of work (prose, poetry or music, percentage which is photography etc.), from the sampled data, so that individual authors and publishers, or their organizations, can receive proper royalty payments for their works. The published works that are being copied are constantly changing, thus samplings must be repeated on an ongoing basis to ensure that appropriate authors and publishers are identified. FIG. 1 illustrates one such typical copyright compliance system. Further description of the various systems and licensing plans employed by the Copyright Clearance Center are found in an advertising brochure entitled Creating Copyright Solutions, distributed by the Copyright Clearance Center, Salem, Mass., the relevant portions of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
Heretofore, manual sampling techniques have been used to collect sample data on copyright copying. Unfortunately, the sampling procedure is cumbersome. The techniques typically require the copier user to complete a detailed form, or to make an extra copy of the whole copy job together with a notation of the number of copies made. A recent system available from ALLDATA Abrechnungs- und Sicherheitssysteme Gmbh of Villengen, Germany, automatically keeps track of the number of copies made in a copy job, but still requires the copier user to enter, via keyboard, an ISBN/ISSN number (the standard international book and serial numbering systems), or to input it using a manual bar-code "wand" if such a code is available on the document. The need for such cumbersome techniques has had a significant impact on the time needed to enter the information, the accuracy of the sampling performed, and the completeness of the information regarding the authors and publishers. Accordingly, the RRO's, authors and publishers commonly receive less than optimal reporting, and income, for the reproduction of copyrighted works. Further, the difficulty of the sampling techniques discourages user organizations from executing licenses with the RRO's, thus greatly reducing the RRO's potential income. If the samplings capture incomplete author and publisher information, the authors and publishers do not receive fair individual recompense; bar-codes, for example, (even if available) typically only refer to the whole publication, like the underlying ISBN/ISSN, and do not identify the authors of individual articles. Finally, with systems of the ALLDATA type, it is difficult to categorize the nature of the content of the reprographic job (such as prose versus poetry versus music, or the proportion of photographic material), as required by some RRO's, again since most bar-code schemes only identify an entire publication or are limited to numerical classifications.
The following disclosures may also be relevant:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,173,408, Patentee: Stewart, Issued: Nov. 6, 1979;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,179,212, Patentee: Lahr, Issued: Dec. 18, 1979;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,728,984, Patentee: Daniele, Issued: Mar. 1, 1988;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,786,940, Patentee: Daniele, Issued: Nov. 22, 1988;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,908,873, Patentee: Philibert et al., Issued: Mar. 13, 1990;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,977,594, Patentee: Shear, Issued: Dec. 11, 1990.
The relevant portions of the foregoing patents may be briefly summarized as follows:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,173,408 to Stewart, assigned to Xerox Corporation, discloses a transaction accounting system for the automated royalty accounting of copyright-coded microfiche documents. The complete automated transaction accounting system includes a microfiche copier and a copier access control system including a transaction data terminal for input of transaction information such as the date of the transaction, coded copyright information such as information contained in the ISSN/ISBN number, user identification and number of copies to be produced. A decoder is provided, the output of the decoder being connected to the transaction data terminal to input the document data. In accordance with this accounting system, a microfiche document being copied must be initially coded, with an optical bar-code, in order for the system to recognize the document as being copyrighted via a wand code reader. The copier itself is provided with a suitable decoder in order to identify the copyright-coded document by the bar-code. Information about the bibliographic source of the document (such as the ISBN/ISSN number) is either coded into the bar-code on the microfiche document, or must be input by the user, either by wand scanning or by keyboard entry. The system may further include a data terminal having a data transmission sequence mode to allow the communication of transaction data with a royalty accounting system.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,179,212 to Lahr, assigned to Xerox Corporation, discloses a transaction accounting system for the automated royalty accounting of optically transparent copyright-coded paper documents. The complete automated transaction accounting system includes a document copier and a copier access control system including a transaction data terminal for input of transaction information such as the date of the transaction, coded copyright information such as information contained in the ISSN/ISBN number, user identification and number of copies to be produced. A decoder is provided, the output of the decoder being connected to the transaction data terminal to input the document data. In accordance with this accounting system, a document being copied must be initially coded, at the time the paper is manufactured or printed, by application of special electrically conductive coatings to one or more areas of its surface, in order for the system to recognize the document as being copyrighted. Further, the copier itself has to be provided with a suitable decoder in order to identify the copyright-coded document. Information about the bibliographic source of the document (such as the ISBN/ISSN number) is either coded into the document, or must be input by the user, either by scanning a special bar-code imprinted on the document or by keyboard entry.
The Lahr system cannot be used with any document which does not have the special conductive coating, so it is not applicable to the great majority of published and copyrighted documents. Moreover, the system cannot reproduce the electrically conductive coating on the copy, so that subsequent reproductions would not be detected. The system would be difficult to use with a plurality of different reprographic devices, since it requires a special document platen to sense the paper conductivity; this would make it difficult to economically install such a device on existing reprographic devices. Further, the system is very manual in nature, unless a bar-code is applied to the surface of the document in addition to the electrically conductive coating. Finally, it is very difficult to identify the author of a particular copied portion of a publication, such as a magazine article, or to categorize the nature of the content of the portion (such as prose versus poetry versus music, or the proportion of photographic material), since most bar-code schemes only identify an entire publication.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,728,984 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,786,940 to Daniele, both assigned to Xerox Corporation, disclose data handling and archiving systems. The systems first transfer a document image into digital signals and then store the image in memory for later retrieval. An electronic printer having an image input scanner is used for scanning the documents. The printer is equipped with a recognition circuit that reads a bar or other code on the document to distinguish encoded documents from other non-coded documents. More specifically, the encoded documents may be encoded in a dense digital form so as to contain significant amounts of binary data. Furthermore, the data may be in an encrypted format requiring knowledge of an encryption key to be decoded. The system does not track the copying of certain documents but rather reads the special coded digital images previously placed on the input document, decodes said images and either prints a message based on their content or uses their content as auxiliary software to control the operation of the printer.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,908,873 describes a system for selectively effecting the operation of a copying or facsimile machine in accordance with the textual content of a scanned document. As a copying security system, the invention reads a portion of the text of the document and correlates the text to a predetermined code. The copier or facsimile machine is inhibited or enabled in accordance with the results of the correlation. A microprocessor, in conjunction with an optical code reader, can be programmed to recognize the presence of copyright notices on the documents being copied, so as to inhibit copying until the requisite amount of money is deposited.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,977,594 discloses a digital database usage metering, billing and security system. A decrypting device is employed to allow access to the database and to measure the quantity of information encrypted in the database. The device also communicates to a remote centralized billing facility to report the usage of the database so as to enable charging a user for such access.
The Xerox Disclosure Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1979) publication by Hickey describes a copyright accounting system wherein the information necessary for establishing a copyright royalty is contained on an index-type card or bar-code associated with each book or periodical maintained in a library. Prior to copying, a user must provide the card or scan the bar-code, and subsequently the information obtained from the card or bar-code would be stored along with the number of copies made.
Unfortunately, the aforedescribed systems often require operator intervention so as to accurately sample the copying. On the other hand, where the pertinent information is incorporated in a discernible mark on the document, recognition of the information may be avoided by covering-up the recognizable identification/information thereon. The present invention, on the other hand, is directed toward a method and apparatus for overcoming these existing drawbacks of document tracking and copyright sampling or accounting systems.
In accordance with the present invention, there is provided a system to account for copyright royalties accrued as a result of printing a copyrighted document on a document printer, including: a digitized representation of the copyrighted document having a printable code on each page thereof, said representation being provided for reproduction by the document printer; means for detecting the presence of the printable code in said digitized representation of the copyrighted document; means for decoding the printable code; means, responsive to said decoding means, for determining a copyright royalty due for reproduction of the copyrighted document; and accounting means for recording the copyright royalty due.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, there is provided an apparatus, associated with a reprographic device, for tracking the reproduction of at least a portion of a copyrighted document having a visible glyph code on each page thereof, said apparatus comprising: means for scanning the visible glyph code contained on at least a portion of a document page being reproduced by said reprographic device and generating a plurality of digital signals representative thereof; memory for storing the digital signals generated by said digital scanning means; and means for decoding the visible glyph code represented by the stored digital signals so as to determine if a copyright royalty is associated with the reproduced page.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the present invention, there is provided an apparatus to prevent the unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted materials on a document printer, including: an original document, input for reproduction by the document printer, said original document having a printable glyph code on each page thereof; means for sensing the presence of the printable glyph code on at least one page of said original document; means for decoding the printable code; means, responsive to said decoding means, for determining that the document is copyrighted; and means for disabling the reproduction of the document upon a determination that the document is copyrighted.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of assuring payment of copyright royalties accrued as a result of printing a copyrighted document on a document printer, including: scanning at least a portion of the copyrighted document to produce a digitized representation thereof, said copyrighted document having a printable code on each page thereof; detecting the presence of the printable code in the digitized representation of the scanned portion of the copyrighted document; decoding the printable code; and determining, from said decoding step, if a copyright royalty is required for reproduction of the copyrighted document.